Butterflies & a creative block
Hello magical creative!
I've got plenty of butterfly art in the making right now, and since COLOR is my word of the year, it has to be colorful art! Some of it is in my art journal, some on paper, some finished, and plenty of pieces are still in progress. For the first time, I put them all together on my table: I hadn't realized there were so many!
Make the art your heart is longing for
A few days ago, I opened one of my journals from 2022 (a regular one, not an art journal) and in it I had written:
“I want to make plenty of butterfly art, I want to focus on this because it's who I am and it's what brings me the most joy. I want to stop pushing myself to always create something new, and instead allow myself to explore this one thing that I truly love.”
And yet, after writing this, it took me two more years of resistance before giving myself permission!
WHY?
Well, here's the honest truth, and I hope it might help some of you give themselves the permission to unleash their own dreams too:
Collage and butterflies have been some of my most favorite things ever since I was a kid, and that's one of the reasons I fell in love with the art of my friend and mentor Kelly Rae Roberts, whose book got me started with mixed media at the very beginning. But at the same time, I didn't allow myself to make beautiful collage butterflies, because it felt like copying. The gremlin in my head said "No, this thing's already taken, so go do something of your own." And for years, I believed it!
Until I went to Kelly Rae's "Creative Joy" retreat last September. My intention for the week was to work with brighter colors, and just like butterflies are drawn to bright flowers, they started making their way into lots of the pieces I was making.
I talked with Kelly Rae about this creative block, and I also shared it with the whole group during the "show and tell" on the last day. Talking about it helped me realize how silly and damaging it was, because of course, my butterflies are going to be different, they've been a part of me ever since I could hold a crayon!
But there I was, holding back the little girl in me and denying her this simple joy.
No more.
So you can expect plenty of butterfly art from me in the near future! And if you've got a similar block, if you believe that there's some kind of art you're not allowed to do because "somebody already does it", then shake that gremlin off and put on your apron. Because you're allowed to make any art that your heart is longing for, and you'll soon realize that you can make it in your own unique way.
Light, Love & Fairy Dust…..
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Butterfly and fairy art are simply my favorite things to create, and right now I’ve got lots in the making! But for a very long time, I had a big creative block holding me back…